One Life Remaining (Portal Book 2)

by Mark J Maxwell

  ‘The plant’s control room.’

  Sloan angled the view. At the top of the steps a door was shut tight. The roaches hadn’t mapped the other side. ‘There’s a gap I can probably squeeze a roach under,’ she said. A few dozen had reached the top of the steps. They slowed, then slipped beneath the door.

  The view screen went dark.

  ‘What just happened?’ Louisa asked.

  ‘I lost touch with the roaches,’ Sloan replied. ‘Hold on.’

  The sense grid reappeared on the screen, zoomed out. The entire station had vanished. In its place a huge black spherical hole had been carved from the grid.

  ‘Where did our sense coverage go?’ Louisa asked.

  ‘The sense motes have died,’ Sloan said.

  ‘Motes have a lifespan of at least twelve hours,’ Coates said. ‘They don’t just die. The blacked out area has no Portal signal. Something’s blocking our subnet booster.’

  The odd shape reminded Louisa of the dead zone caused by Ken and Ed’s electromagnetic pulse. At the time newscasts coined it the Brixton Blackout. She remembered seeing a map of the area affected. It had been circular too, with Ken’s tower block sitting slap bang in the middle. ‘What’s at the center of the disturbance?’

  ‘The control room,’ Coates said after a moment.

  ‘Is there another way inside?’

  He nodded. ‘Yeah. A fire escape. It leads to the rear of the plant.’

  ‘Take the armed response units off the gate. I want them covering the station’s exterior, three officers on each corner. Keep them far enough back to maintain line of sight at all times. Sloan and I will head in through the loading bay.’

  ‘I’m coming with you,’ Drew said.

  ‘No,’ Louisa said. ‘You’re staying put. You don’t budge from here, okay?’

  Drew frowned at Louisa’s tone. He looked about to argue, and Louisa wondered if she’d finally pushed him too far. Then his expression softened and his mouth quirked at the corners. ‘Sure, Inspector. Whatever you say.’

  *

  The sense grid hadn’t conveyed how dark it was inside the station. Sense motes didn’t need ambient light to map their surroundings. The MET subnet had come online again, but the motes and roaches in the hall were still unresponsive. Coates couldn’t explain why.

  Louisa considered using her optical implants to augment her vision and then imagined what would happen if the subnet went down again. The thought of plunging into darkness was more than a little unnerving. Instead she and Sloan made use of two torches from the MIR’s lockup. They’d gained entry through the passageway from the depot and now stood at the exact spot where Coates observed his phantom. The light from their torches flashed around the aircraft hangar-sized space.

  DS Bolton hadn’t protested when she told him to remain outside. He understood her reasoning. The DPS’ investigation timeline wouldn’t terminate with Fletcher’s death and she didn’t want a solicitor using the DPS investigation to question the legality of any arrest Bolton made after the shooting. For once she aimed to follow procedure to the letter.

  Sloan’s torch beam was skittish. Louisa eyed the detective with concern. This was Sloan’s first foray from behind a desk in years. She must have sensed Louisa’s scrutiny but if the detective was feeling any pressure, it wasn’t reflected in the determined look she gave her boss. Reassured, Louisa turned to the spiral staircase.

  The rusted metal screeched when Louisa put her weight on the first step. Their passage would be far from silent. Louisa didn’t mind. If anyone waited for them in the control room her aim wasn’t to catch them unawares. She wanted them to feel like they had a chance to escape. When they ran the armed response units could scoop them up. DCI Lenihan had concurred, even if he remained far from impressed by her own involvement. Louisa’s job was to direct her team, not lead a charge. He’d made that point particularly clear when she accepted the SCD7 job. Louisa readily agreed at the time, but every operation since had seen her aching to join her team on the ground. Perhaps she feared turning into DI Fuller. Her old boss had become desk-bound in the end. Afraid to venture into the real world for fear it might bite back.

  When they reached the top of the stairs Louisa received a firm nod from Sloan in reply. She turned the handle and stepped inside.

  A man sat cross-legged on the floor, eyes closed and chin resting on his chest, leaning back against a closed door. The man looked to be in his early twenties with thinning brown hair tied back in a ponytail. CADET presented her with an ID. Killian Baker. She blinked away the rest of CADET’s summary and glanced around the room. Baker was alone. She jerked her head, sending Sloan around a large console. Most of the control room’s systems were missing, lightened patches on the floor marking where they once stood. A few panels still remained, their knobs, switches and LED bulbs covered in a thick layer of grime and rust.

  Baker still hadn’t moved. His hands were clasped and resting on his lap. Increasingly aware of how bizarre the situation felt Louisa kept her weapon aimed at the man as she moved forward. Sloan came at him from the side.

  ‘Metropolitan police,’ Louisa said, ‘hands on your head.’

  Baker’s eyes flicked open. He looked up at her and smiled.

  ‘Hands on your head,’ Louisa repeated, more firmly.

  He complied this time. ‘He said it would be you.’ The man was soft-spoken. ‘He’s never wrong.’

  She made a circular motion with the gun’s barrel. ‘Turn around. Keep your ass on the floor.’ The man shifted around until his back faced Louisa. ‘Are you alone, Mr Baker?’

  ‘I’ve had my doubts, in the past.’ He looked over his shoulder at her. ‘But now you’re here. It’s all so clear.’

  Sloan holstered her weapon, brought one of the man’s wrists behind his back, cuffed it, then cuffed the other.

  Louisa frowned at the man. ‘Coates, any movement outside?’

  No response.

  Louisa glanced up at the sense grid. It had vanished. ‘Sloan, are you connected?’

  Sloan’s eyes darted up and down. She shook her head.

  Louisa looked around the room. She moved around to the man’s side so he could see her. ‘Move.’ She motioned with her gun. ‘Over to the radiator.’ The man slid across to a cast iron radiator a few feet from the door. ‘Stay with him,’ she said to Sloan.

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  On the door hung a laminated emergency evacuation plan with a you are here red spot. Green arrows indicated the exit path. It opened onto a concrete stairwell leading down.

  Louisa shone the torch over the bannister. Two flights below a door swung closed. The sound of someone running echoed up the stairwell.

  Louisa raced down the steps and wrenched open the door. A dark expanse stretched out. She raised the gun and torch, illuminating a long passageway and a man running toward a door at the far end.

  ‘Armed police,’ Louisa shouted, ‘stop where you are!’

  He skidded to a halt.

  She trotted forward, then slowed as she approached the man. He still had his back to her.

  ‘Turn around,’ she said.

  The man faced her. He couldn’t have been more than thirty, and tall, well over six feet. Center parted jet-black hair hung loose, its tips brushing his shoulders. His gaunt features appeared particularly anaemic in contrast. If it wasn’t for his black hair she might have thought him an albino.

  ‘Facedown on the floor,’ Louisa said.

  The man took a step back.

  ‘Don’t move,’ she said.

  The man ignored her. He’d nearly reached the door. Louisa frowned. She could hear voices. They were indistinct. Whispers. Coming from the other side of the door. Before she could understand what the voices were saying they faded away, making Louisa wonder if she’d imagined them.

  ‘I’m serious,’ Louisa said. ‘Don’t take another step.’

  ‘You’re not going to shoot.’ Dull eyes reflected none of the concern he should have fe
lt with a gun pointed straight at his head. ‘It’s not my time.’ He backed into the door, and slipped through.

  ‘Dammit.’ She rushed to the end of the corridor and followed him out.

  ‘Drop your weapon!’

  Three armed response unit officers appeared out of the darkness, their weapons trained on her. Louisa let the pistol tumble from her grasp. ‘Hold your fire, I’m DI Bennett.’ She slowly raised her arms.

  Their stances relaxed somewhat.

  ‘Where did he go?’ Louisa demanded.

  The officers glanced at each other before one of them spoke. ‘Where did who go?’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Coates waved Louisa over as she entered the incident room. ‘Boss, you’ve got to see this.’

  ‘You’ve linked Fletcher to Worrell?’ She hurried down the steps to join him and Sloan.

  ‘Well…no, but look. What do you see?’ He pointed at the sense footage playing on his screen.

  Coates and Sloan had been poring over Fletcher’s history graph since their return from Tilbury. Once the pathologist signed Fletcher’s death certificate the SIU Oversight Committee authorised a graph spanning the last three months. Louisa had asked for six, but if they found something incriminating they could always ask for more time.

  She concentrated on an immersion tag displayed in the top right of the screen and the console offered a range of interactive options to her optical implants. A burning itch immediately formed behind her eyes. Her implants had been in constant use since she got back from the power station. She felt a strong urge to claw at her eyes, or bang her head against a wall. Anything to get rid of the gnawing irritation. Instead she took a slow breath, pinched the bridge of her nose and blinked the screen into focus.

  The footage looked down on an alley transecting a chip shop and greengrocer. The alley itself was free of sense strips and faded into a dead zone halfway back. A black Volkswagen coupe materialised, took a left at the end of the alley, and pulled into a parking space in front of the grocers. Opaque windows cleared, revealing a single occupant.

  ‘Arthur Fletcher,’ Louisa said. ‘So?’

  Coates zoomed in on Fletcher’s face. ‘Have a closer look.’

  David Coates wasn’t nearly as infuriating as Ed Cooley had been, but he sure had his moments. When Louisa submitted an SIU resource request for Fletcher’s case file Coates messaged her, angling for the job. Career criminals like Fletcher offered the most challenging history graphs, or so Ed Cooley often attested. Unlike other Portal users they operated under the assumption the MET monitored their profile interactions and acted accordingly. Still, she needed him to keep focussed. ‘David, now’s not the time for guessing games.’

  ‘I’ll give you a hint. Look at Fletcher’s eyes.’

  ‘Why don’t we skip ahead to the part where you tell me what’s going on.’

  Coates gestured at the screen. ‘He never blinks.’

  Louisa leaned forward. Coates was right. It was like the footage had been paused. Fletcher hadn’t moved a muscle since the windows cleared. ‘Has someone manipulated the footage?’

  ‘Nothing so complex. He used a jack-in-the-box. An old cold war spy trick designed to misdirect anyone following your car. What you do is lose your tail for a moment, then activate a pop-up dummy of yourself in the driver’s seat. At the same time you ditch out of the car. Then when whoever’s following you catches up it looks like you’re still sitting at the vehicle. Fletcher’s decoy is more sophisticated, most likely utilising a falseface tuned to exhibit his facial characteristics. But the principle’s the same. We think Fletcher jumped out in the alley and let the car continue on auto using VANS. From then on, he continued on foot and likely employed another falseface to fool CADET.’

  Falsefaces were becoming more and more popular, especially amongst the young. They viewed them as an act of social rebellion, giving two fingers to the government. Covering the user’s face, they used a similar approach to the stealth mask Ouza wore when he carried out his contract killings for Victor Korehkov. Sense emissions were absorbed by the falseface, which then relayed a mimicked facial signature back to the strip.

  Although Kenneth Barry was never linked to their creation, the design was too similar to his stealth mask to be a coincidence. To sense strips they were as effective as Ken’s stealth mask had ever been, except now the tech was available to purchase on the high street. Falseface users rarely impersonated someone else as profile forgery remained a criminal offence. Instead they programmed the devices to display heads of animals or cartoon characters. Sense footage from any London street now resembled a strange melding of real life and fantastical caricatures.

  ‘Do you know where he went?’ Louisa asked.

  Coates’ enthusiasm waned. ‘Unfortunately, no. We ringed the block in a sense perimeter but no one matching his description crossed it. He probably had a different set of clothes stashed somewhere and crossed the perimeter with an activated falseface. An hour later his car moves off under a pre-programmed navigation plan and enters yet another dead zone in a shopping centre car park half a mile away. We believe Fletcher met his car again there. During the entire time period he made no Portal interactions, so we’ve got nothing on the graph.’

  Louisa had taken a look at Worrell’s initial statement before heading to the incident room. He denied any knowledge of the weapons found inside his container. Forensics had later discovered a sizeable quantity of trance hidden within the construction equipment, which again Worrell denied knowing anything about. ‘We need to prove Worrell knew more about Fletcher’s operation than he’s letting on. Has CADET come up with anything?’

  Coates shook his head. ‘Fletcher had no communication of any sort with Worrell on Portal. Not even a single financial transaction.’

  ‘We’ve identified several British bank accounts belonging to Fletcher,’ Sloan said. ‘So far there’s nothing untoward in any of his last three months’ statements. If he ran the operation anything like Korehkov, he’ll have used Cryptex.’

  Louisa bit her lip. Too many criminals were making use of Cryptex to mask their money trails. Korehkov had been a prime example. Despite the NCA putting Korehkov away for twenty years they still hadn’t located the proceeds from his criminal activities. SIU concluded he’d used Cryptex, named after the company with the same name that had created the service. Their Cryptex service facilitated the transfer of cryptographically generated digital currencies. Cryptex even had physical branches across the country where customers could exchange their digital currency for hard cash and vice versa. With millions of transactions occurring every second it had proved impossible to identify the exchanges belonging to Korehkov. They were undoubtedly being used to launder proceeds from crime, and the MET Commissioner had called for the exchanges to be banned. So far however the government showed little appetite for restricting the service. A lucrative Cryptex tax introduced in the last budget may have been the reason why.

  Louisa tried to remain optimistic. The team had been scrutinising the graph for less than an hour. She still harboured the hope, however slim, that Fletcher’s graph would expose Worrell as an active player in the weapons smuggling. ‘What about the two Latvians, Vanags and Dukurs?’

  ‘So far we’ve nothing connecting them to Worrell or Fletcher,’ Sloan said.

  ‘They were the hired help,’ Louisa said. ‘Low on the food chain. It’s unlikely they would have had direct dealings with Worrell. But Fletcher?’ She shook her head. ‘The two security guards ID’d Oliver Vanags as the driver of the flatbed. Are you saying we’ve no record of any communication between Fletcher and Vanags?’

  Sloan winced. ‘Sorry, ma’am. No calls, no messages, nothing. Perhaps they only met outside of Portal?’

  ‘So when they wanted a chat they had to drive out into the middle of nowhere? If Fletcher left Portal every time Vanags wanted to ask him something we’d have a lot more instances of Fletcher leaving Portal in the last three months.’

  ‘They may
have been able to stay in touch during the three months without using Portal,’ Coates said, ‘The jack-in-the-box might not be the only trick they used. In SIU we’ve come across evidence of gangs making use of dead drops to communicate with members.’

  ‘You mean leaving a message for another person to pick up later?’ Louisa asked.

  ‘In its most basic form, yes. A message is written on hard copy or digital media and left in a dead zone to be collected by a second party. These days the dead drop permutations are endless. Radiograms can be sent between primitive receivers for example. We’ve also identified criminals using encrypted mesh networks set up between Global Web based tablets and mobile phones.’

  ‘And none of this would appear on a history graph?’

  ‘Exactly. Profiles wouldn’t get updated. It’s simple, and effective.’

  ‘Okay, let’s assume Fletcher coordinated the entire smuggling operation without leaving a single trace on Portal.’ Louisa paused to emphasise how little she thought of that theory. ‘Where are we with the other graphs?’

  ‘Worrell’s is still with Oversight,’ Sloan said. ‘His lawyer submitted a review extension plea.’

  The SIU Oversight Committee had been set up on the recommendation of a parliamentary review carried out against MET subnet practice and procedure. The review had been ordered by the Prime Minister following the Benoit Walsh scandal. Independent from the MET, the committee ruled on all requests for history graphs.

  ‘For what reason?’ Louisa asked.

  ‘To put together a preservation of client privacy defence. They’ve granted him twenty-four hours. The Latvian’s brief has done the same.’

  Delaying tactics aside, Louisa wasn’t entirely convinced the graphs would be granted by the committee, even if their briefs came up with nothing new. Unless Louisa could connect the dots between Fletcher, Worrell, and the Latvians, their statements would remain uncontested. Dukurs had opened fire on her officers, but he’d suffered severe head trauma and remained in a coma. They’d only get his graph once he regained consciousness, or if he died.